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Sunday, 16 October 2016

A hungover Dweezil stumbles downstairs to join Akilah and Celkini for breakfast. Xavros has departed temporarily, suggesting that Dweezil's plans for revolution might not be the wisest thing to do. Celkini points out the notice requesting adventurers check out a cult in Thundertree. Successfully completing this would help build some reputation in the city. The trio decide to rent horses to get to their destination more quickly, but their combined CHR is -837489174 and they fail to negotiate a good price. They leave indignantly, searching for another stable. The guards offer no help, and a dwarven store owner warns them away from the other, more dangerous areas. Celkini purchases a few daggers, but they find no other horse rental options. They refuse to go back to the first stable. Dweezil figures they should get all the gold from this quest then go back and buy a horse and kill it in front of that jerk to show him who's boss.

Celkini knows from her travels that Thundertree is along the river out of Neverwinter, so they follow the path. Celkini is chattering away, Akilah is examining a hang nail, and Dweezil is pondering the meaning of life. Good thing Ben is paying attention, though nothing out of the ordinary happens. Celkini even catches a nice wabbit for some stew.

Dweezil suggests that, since the group is much smaller than before, they should not over extend themselves. The notice only requested information on the cult, so he has the others promise not to get into any fights. Celkini makes this promise, but the others aren't certain about her sincerity.

The night goes shockingly peacefully. Dweezil wakes in surprise and updates his diary to read: Days without death: 1. He reminds Celkini of the promise not to kill anything, only to find her slaughtering another small woodland creature and smearing its blood on her face. But she promises again not to do anything dangerous.

After breakfast, Celkini leads them to the entrance to Thundertree. A sign warns of zombies and plant monsters inhabiting the ruins. They check out the first building, which is almost completely crumbled to ruins and covered in overgrown weeds. Celkini examines the flora and determines them to be fairly normal. Dweezil takes out his notebook and starts to take notes, mapping the area. Akilah keeps a tense watch and Celkini climbs a tree to get a a better view. She spies a bunch of dead giant spiders. Akilah thinks this is a good sign to GTFO, but Dweezil wants to examine the corpses, but as he leaves, he feels a scraping at his ankle. He looks down and finds branches reaching for him. "Watch out! Things are moving!" Dweezil shouts. Celkini recognizes them as twig blights. Akilah rushes in to cleave two of the creatures apart as Dweezil backs away. "Am I allowed to kill things now?" Celkini asks excitedly. When permission is granted, she aims her blowgun, but misses. The remaining creature goes after Akilah. The half-elf chops the twig blight into kindling.

Dweezil still wants to examine the spider corpses, but is more wary. He fashions a torch out of the twig blight remains and proceeds onward. Akilah has no lover for spiders, so she stays back, sword ready, while Dweezil and Celkini continue on. They find claw marks and bite marks on the spiders. Celkini determines the creature to be of significant size. She also points out that the spiders who themselves are poisonous creatures, were poisoned by something else. Dweezil determines that they have been dead for about a day. CSI: Thundertree continues.

Dweezil smells something strange and acidic from a nearby tower. He's certain that the spiders came from the tower, and suspects that there are more in the tower. What killed them might be in there too. He hypothesizes that the monster shows some signs of intelligence. It has poisoned its prey and allowed them to escape, knowing they would die shortly after, but it has not come after them to eat them. None of this is enough information to earn the reward because they haven't found any signs of a cult.

They decide to check out the nearby tavern. The door is firmly closed and the wood is bloated. Akilah manages to shove the door open. Ben slips inside but moments later, they hear groans and shuffling and a zombie, ashes falling from its desiccated body, begins to rise. Ben rushes out and leaps into Celkini's arms. She shrieks and grabs the torch from Dweezil and tosses it in the tavern and slams the door. But the zombies are having none of this. They press forward and the door bursts open. Celkini and Ben attack the first zombie. Akilah follows up and a puff of strange ash escapes the body after she hits, but she and Celkini leap back in time to avoid it. Celkini takes out a second zombie, but Dweezil gets some of the ash cloud from it gets into Dweezil's eyes. Despite his disadvantage, he manages to defeat a zombie after Akilah weakens it. With two more left stumbling through the door. Celkini and Akilah kill one and the next falls. They finish it off.

Inside the tavern, by the light of the torch that Celkini threw in, they see a door that leads to another section of the tavern. They don't find anything of use in the first room, so they continue on through the door. Dweezil recognizes a faint smell of yeast in the air...

We are poly-gamists

They say that coal under intense pressure makes diamonds. Well what kind of pressure makes glitter? The pressure of an army of enemies, the pressure of overwhelming PvP and PvEodds, the pressure of defeating that boss when all bets are against you. But when that pressure is on, we explode.Fabulously.